Originally Posted by tvaddict37:
“please can someone explain to me what Mark has tgat i don't see.
Last week fiona did a good dance with lots of dance content. Mark stomped around with no kicks or flicks. (Previously fiona did an awesome charlston that was under marked IMHO).
This week Mark did a good ballroom, but Ben doea an awesome Charlston with fabulous lifts, but goes out? Mark was walking it, not dancing.
What do the 3 of them see that Craig and i don't??
And please don't say entertainment as i thought the pro judges judged on ability, not entertainment.”
OK I won't tell you it is entertainment

but will try to explain it another way from the perspective of a regular dancer. I think the BIBs are the key to answering this. Lifts no matter how fabulous are not what dancing is about they are just embellishments.
Oddly dancing is sort of about walking. Its about walking in sympathy with music in a stylised manner. The stylising differs from dance to dance - so Argentine Tango has a different walk to Cha Cha for example.
But irrespective of which style and which walk is adopted some basic things need to be happening to make it dancing as opposed to walking in a weird way. The basic things are guided by the music. In any dance there are places where you can step, and places where you can break and places where you can't. Stepping or breaking in the wrong places relative to the music looks discordant.
A good dancer moves - walks!- to reflect the tempo, rhythm, timing of the music and also works with the phrasing and features in the music - flares, runs, crescendos whatever.
Once this is happening then embellishments such as lifts and other such adornments, dips, spins, turns, kicks, flicks can be added. Most of this list are integral to particular dances such as kicks and flicks in jive, enganches and ganchos in Argentine Tango and so on.
But just because a dance doesn't have them doesn't necessarily make it a bad dance. It may not be a spectacular dance (in the true sense of that word) but it can still be beautiful.
Every time we have a new intake of beginners in our classes they stand there expectantly waiting to be shown how to do the wow wee stuff ( what I call the flash and trash) and a good number are very disappointed to find that they have weeks of walking to learn before they get anywhere near a lift.
Actually we don't teach lifts but if we did in week one and the students were competent we might turn out some good acrobats but they wouldn't be dancers. In my opinion Strictly sets a bad example in that there is far to much reliance on lifting - but to be fair its a TV show and the public want the woo wee moments because they are entertaining.
But they are not the dancing bit. The dancing bit is the walking - but the right sort of walking. In my opinion dancing isn't so much about how it looks but about how it feels. I would rather dance simple steps with someone who chose them to beautifully emphasis elements in the music and executed them to fit the pace, timing, rhythm etc than someone that threw in every flashy move known to man badly executed and slightly off time.
If it feels good to the couple who are dancing there is every chance it will look good to the spectator. The embellishments are just window dressing - or in the case of Kristina, in particular, a smoke screen.